33 | Kiandah
Shadow Keep
The beast approaches me as my lust turns into something untamed and wholly primal. I remember the feeling before, from the cabin. I’d been hurting then, so scared, so embarrassed. I don’t feel any of those things now.
I feel powerful and I feel restless.
The beast is massive, towering over me by the length of two Alpha bodies. Its lips are curled away from its massive fangs that gleam silver. It comes towards me, its pants torn over its legs and its erection pushing free of the silver and black fur that surrounds it. Semen leaks from its tip.
He swipes the furniture out of his way like they’re the discarded toys of children, but I don’t back away. My pulse is pounding. I surge forward to meet him. I grab his massive, wet snout in both of my hands and I use all of my might — and some of my gifts — to force his snout down to my feet.
“Heel,” I command. The words are rippling, like the air. I feel everything vibrating.
The beast snaps and snarls, but I force it down, force him to obey my commands until he eventually settles on a whimper. I hold him there a few more moments and then slowly back away.
“You will wait until I give the command, beast,” I hiss as I feel my concentration start to slip.
My legs are wobbling. I don’t have much time. I quickly turn, when I’m sure the beast is settled, and survey my surroundings. Yaron has cleared out all of the furniture. It sits upturned against the walls.
Perfect.
I cross the room and grab the blankets from the bed in shaking arms. I throw them on the floor on top of pillows. I take my time arranging them — as much of it as I can spare — while sweat beads on my hairline and glistens across my scalp. Yaron whimpers behind me and I turn to see the beast standing so still, its claws extended into the carpets below, shredding them. He’s so big he nearly blocks out all of the light from the windows. Almost, but not quite. Because scattered between his massive feet are errant rays of sunlight.
I step back into the center of my makeshift nest and cast my hand towards the fireplace. Fire erupts within it. I bring my hands to the front of my dress and undo the ties, then let it pool to the ground at my feet. I turn around, lower onto my knees and then stretch, like a lazy cat, out before the Berserker who loves me.
“Wait,” I whimper when I hear claws scrape. My core is contracting, the sensation painful. “Not yet. One more moment.” My chest heaves as I reach around my body, my cheek and chest pressed to the ground as I use my hands to spread my pussy lips from behind. A gush of slick releases.
“Now come, Yaron. Come fuck me.”
The beast roars and rushes to cover my body, trapping me against the ground between two walls of fur. His cock spears me and it’s huge — bigger than Yaron’s, and feels different, too, slicker somehow, softer, more ribbed and fucking incredible. It pounds in and out of me, fur meeting the back of my thighs in a way that I should find disturbing, but don’t. He’s seen my darkest fantasies now, and responded to them in kind, rather than ridicule them. And for that, we are both rewarded.
His rut tips my heat out of this world and into another reality. We end up fucking for hours, until the sunlight disappears and moonlight rises. He fucks me as his beast for a while, and then in his Alpha form. The haze is difficult to make memories out of, but the sensations are everything. His beast’s knot filling me, like a series of massive marbles. His cum spilling out of my body when he’s ready to go again. We don’t speak — there’s no time for that — there’s only the occasional kiss, bite, bond.
He bonds me over and over again and I welcome it, displaying my neck, presenting my inner thighs, letting him bite me and fuck me wherever he likes. He spurts cum across my chest and I smear it over my body. I slam him down onto my nest and straddle his face, releasing slick all over him.
He whimpers every time I offer him praise. He moans every time I tell him how he feels inside of me. He purrs each time I come and purrs even louder each time his knot fills me, making it possible for me to overcome any pain resulting from his knot’s expansion or his erection leaving my heat in preparation for the next round.
The hours span into night, until the sun rises again. And again. And again.
Seven more times.
By the seventh night, my heat is spent and I finally collapse in Yaron’s arms. He’s kissing my face, telling me how good of a girl I am and how well I did. I love the praise and I love giving it back to him.
Yaron leaves me sleeping alone in our bed, covered in heavy blankets. I want to know why he’s leaving and where he’s going, but a few moments later, he returns with water and a lavish food plate. I gorge myself, only to pass out, wake up when Yaron urges me to, gorge myself and sleep all over again. I do this in several rounds and each time I wake, Yaron is there, touching me softly, urging me to eat, to get up, helping me to the bathroom, carrying me there…and only occasionally fucking me in between each cycle.
He’s back to his skin and I’m out of my heat, so this is just for fun, for the sheer beauty of it, for the memories made and shared. At some point, I’m sated and lucid enough to open my eyes and see Yaron staring down at me. The look in his eyes — it hits me like an eclipse, so hard to watch, but I can’t look away and so I’m blinded by it.
It brings tears to my eyes, so I tell him a truth I’ve held for some time. “I love you, Yaron.”
He smiles. “You know, I thought for a while that you were half in love with me already, but didn’t know it.”
I roll onto my side and slip my arm beneath my head to use as a pillow, just so I can watch him better. The dusting of hair on his chest. The scratches. The healing wounds. “Maybe, I was.”
“Kiandah,” he groans, rubbing his face. He reaches behind him and picks up something on the bed — pages of my artwork — and tosses them down onto me. I let him without picking up any of the pages. “You are not and never have been half in love with me. I have been fighting for your heart this entire time and you’ve only pretended to deny me. Your heart has been mine this entire time. It’s always been mine. Even before I saw you, you saw me.”
“Yes.” I cannot lie. Wouldn’t dare it. “You’re right, my Lord.”
“You are wicked.” He growls and plants his fists on either side of me. “And I love you.”
He begins kissing a line from my chin down my chest, over my clavicle to my right arm. He lavishes it with love and a tenderness most unbecoming of the severe Shadow Lord, eventually reaching my fingers. They feel kind of funny. I lift my arm and find thin gold rings adorning each of my fingers, but not the thumb. The ring on my pinky is studded with small, light blue stones, the stones on my ring finger are purple, on my longest finger the stones are red, and on my pointer finger, the stones are black.
His hips come to rest in the cradle of mine and he props himself up on his elbows. There is no sunlight today, but today I don’t need it. He kisses my ringed fingers one at a time. “Blue for your flames. Purple for the color of your fire above it. Red for the embers they create. Black for the ash they leave behind. I had them made for you. I hope you like them.”
I grin so giddily that Yaron smiles, too. “I…” I feel embarrassed at what I was about to say and shake my head, then nod, realizing he’ll misinterpret. “I love them.”
“What?”
“Nothing. They’re perfect.”
“If something’s the matter or they don’t fit right — though I did bring different sized rings in here to test while you were sleeping,” he teases, “then tell me. I’ll have them changed. And if you don’t like wearing them, that’s fine, too. I’m still learning with you.”
He’s got such an easy way about him, I feel like crying all over again. He’s so, so…happy. I’ve never seen him like this. Like there aren’t Fates out there. Like Ruby City hasn’t fallen and the ports with them. Right now, he’s like this and he’s fully here, present, with me.
Overcome, I blurt, “I love them, Yaron. I’ve just never…gotten to wear jewelry before. Never owned any. No one in my family has.”
He blinks at me and a range of emotions crosses his face too quickly for me to interpret all of them. What settles, when it’s finished, is frustration. He smooths his hands over my head, cradling me like I’m something very precious and not capable of vanquishing an undead army almost entirely by myself. He kisses each of my cheeks, the tip of my nose, the space between my eyes and then my neck. It tickles, the scar there, but I don’t fear it or flinch away. I trust him with everything that I am and let him kiss and bite and lick before pulling back.
“I will do better for the females of the Shadowlands, Kiandah, I swear this to you. I will give no other family reason to despair. And you will help me.” He kisses my neck where Merlin sliced it.
I shiver and nod and then settle into the warmth of his words. “Of course I will.”
“We will change things together, Kiandah. Things that Shadow Lords have failed to. The Shadowlands deserve a better Alpha, which they will have, but only because they have their first Lady, too.”
“Thank you.”
He snarls, “And I will have you dripping in jewels, my Lady.”
I laugh again, admiring my new rings as my fingers card through his hair. “You know I don’t want that.”
“What do you want?”
“To live happily with you forever.”
“I accept your proposal, Lady Kiandah. It is done.”
I laugh. “What do you mean, it’s done? I thought we had a whole ceremony to get to.”
Lord Yaron lifts up onto his forearms and gawks at me, then grins. “My Lady, do you speak of the Red Moon Festival?”
I nod. Laughter bursts out of him that makes me laugh, too. “What is it? What’s so funny?”
Lord Yaron collapses on top of me in a pile of lovely kisses. He kisses my cheek and rolls to the side, pulling my body onto his. Looking up into my eyes with crows’ feet surrounding his, he palms the side of my head and says, “Lady Kiandah of the Shadowlands, the red moon passed nearly a week ago.”
“What? Are you…are you saying…”
Laughter bursts out of him louder and more boyish than I’ve ever heard it before. “We missed it, my Lady. My sweet, insatiable queen.”